Posted by Nick Stone (62.255.32.5) on March 04, 2002 at 12:16:06:

Dear friends,

I have been conversing with someone who has been investigating the Faith, and that person had some questions which I could not answer very well. How can we be sure that the translations of the Writings which we have are accurate to the originals? If Farsi was Shoghi Effendi's first language, how can we be sure his Arabic was sufficiently strong to render his English translations accurate?

I have a personal question also related to this, and that is that if the Word of God is creative, then the holy scriptures of any religion should also possess that creative power, no matter what language they are translated into. However, at what point does accuracy of translation prove a hindrance? Of course one cannot exactly translate all of one language into another, I am aware of this with regard to our own Writings. I would be interested in hearing people's thoughts.

Thank you,

Nick

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